Technology for Oral Assessment

With recent developments in multimedia recording, researchers have begun to investigate the use of technology in oral proficiency assessment. This article addresses the benefits and ease of using seven different multimedia tools to assess P-16 students’ oral language proficiency and compares traditional methods of in-class oral language assessment to out-of-class recordings. Additionally, the authors discuss the potential benefits of using technology to lower students’ affective filter, to provide teachers with a digital portfolio of student progress, and to increase instructional and preparation time

Balancing Power Costs and Fisheries Values Under the Northwest Power Act

In addressing the anadromous fisheries resource affected by hydroelectric facilities in the Columbia River Basin, Congress directed that the Pacific Northwest Electric Power and Conservation Planning Council (Council) balance the values of this resource with the need for an economical electric power supply. The central thesis of this Article is that Congress, in the Northwest Power Act, required that appropriate mitigation measures for the fisheries resource shall be determined by balancing the fisheries values that would be achieved against the costs that would be incurred by electric power consumers. While some commentators have urged that an appropriate balancing does not require such weighing of values and costs, in our view, it is mandatory as a matter of law under the Northwest Power Act. This is clear from the plain language of the statute and from the only reasonable interpretation of the relevant legislative history. Moreover, the Pacific Northwest\u27s declining energy surplus and a generally stabilized fishery in the Columbia River system dictate, as a matter of prudent public policy, a more careful and objective evaluation of the fisheries values to be achieved with the region\u27s increasingly scarce ratepayer dollars. The historical background of the Northwest Power Act places the relevant power and fish interests in the proper context

Establish Your Presence in the Blogosphere: A Guide to Blog Development for the Foreign Langauge Classroom

As the wave of technology progresses, the static Web page has given way to the Weblog (blog) as a medium for delivering information. The blog has moved the technology forward with its bidirectional communication ability. This article discusses the evolution of blogs, important considerations when establishing a blog presence, and directions for creating blogs. Online examples are given to guide the reader

Community Engagement Institute 2017

Agenda documenting time and dates of speaker presentations. Presentations varied from topics surrounding higher education, community-engaged research, service learning, collaboration between education and communities, and community-academic partner spotlights

What Audacity! Decreasing Student Anxiety while Increasing Instructional Time

Promoting student engagement in the second language classroom can be difficult for teachers. Multiple obstacles such as perceptions of the irrelevance of authentic language applications and the affective barriers (e.g. performance anxiety speaking before peers) tend to hinder student oral language performance. For teachers, especially for beginners, other obstacles appear such as being given the most challenging assignments with little to no professional support. Many times these educators scramble to squeeze the most out of every minute in the classroom for instructional purposes while trying to increase student achievement. Three free and open source software options are presented and findings from two studies of focusing on the use of Audacity indicate multiple benefits for both teachers and students. Afterwards, the authors demonstrate how to use Audacity for oral language assessment and discuss its implications for the world language classroom

Sweet flowers are slow and weeds make haste: anthropogenic dispersal of plants via garden and construction soil

This is the final version of the article. Available from Oxford University Press via the DOI in this record.Anthropogenic activities are increasingly responsible for the dispersal of plants. Of particular concern is anthropogenic dispersal of problematic invasive non-native plants. A common dispersal vector is the movement of soil containing seeds or rhizomes. Housing development and domestic gardening activities cause large quantities of soil to be moved, and understanding the role of these activities is critical for informing policy and management to reduce the spread of problematic plants. Here, by collecting soil samples being moved for housing development and domestic gardening, and observing the species that germinated from these samples, we determined the quantities and invasive status of plants moved. From our samples nearly 2000 individuals representing 90 species germinated. Our results suggest that given the quantity of topsoil needed to cover an average-sized UK garden (190 m2 ), there could be 2.2 million and c.2 million viable seeds in soil sourced from housing developments and gardens, respectively. In both housing development and garden samples, native species were more abundant and species-rich than non-native naturalised and invasive species. Buddleia (an invasive) was the most common species overall and in garden samples; this is likely due to multiple traits that adapt it to dispersal, such as prolific seed production. The abundance of invasive and naturalised species was significantly higher in garden than in housing development samples, suggesting that informal movement of soil between gardens poses a greater risk of spreading invasive plants than commercial sources. Consequences for models predicting future distributions of plants, and strategies to mitigate anthropogenic dispersal of problematic plants are considered.This project was funded by the University of Exeter and the Animal and Plant Health Agency. We are grateful to all who gave samples for this study

Estimating the Economic Value of Australian Stock Herding Dogs

This study aimed to estimate the value of the typical Australian herding dog in terms of predicted return on investment. This required an assessment of the costs associated with owning herding dogs and estimation of the work they typically perform. Data on a total of 4,027 dogs were acquired through The Farm Dog Survey which gathered information from 812 herding dog owners around Australia. The median cost involved in owning a herding dog was estimated to be a total of AU$7,763 over the period of its working life. The work performed by the dog throughout this time was estimated to have a median value of AU$40,000. So, herding dogs typically provided their owners with a 5.2-fold return on investment. When respondents were asked to nominate the maximal, one-off, veterinary expenditure they would consider to remedy an illness or injury for an especially valued dog, the median response was AU$1,001–2,000 which is not concordant with the dogs’ calculated median lifetime value. The current findings equip working dog owners with useful information to make financially appropriate expenditure decisions related to their working dogs. This is expected to increase farm profitability and improve welfare for farm dogs